Page 33 of Fallen Heirs

He studied my expression. “You look like you were standing here to greet me about something. Something you look considerably pissed about.”

“Considerably pissed?It’s beyond even that.”

He shoved a hand through his shock of white and black hair. “I’m sorry about the way it happened, but it didneedto happen, Alena. You’d left me no choice. I had to break through it.”

“And you get to decide when I break through something?”

“Yes. When you’re not talking to us and you pull this shit, absolutely. Talon was so wiped he could barely fucking move.”

“If it was that bad, why didn’t any of you say anything?”

“Because no one wants to upset you and the two of them convinced me to let it lie too, but then it went too far so I took action.”

I threw up my hands “No one wants to upset me. There you go again treating me like glass! Like I can’t handle my own shit, like I’m some victim, something to just protect and mind.”

He got right up in my space and glared down at me. “Prove me wrong.”

“What?”

“That’s how you’re coming across. A similar thing happened when we first met and you were scared of your own magic, your darkness.” He slid his hand to my cheek, stroking in that soothing way he did with Talon. “And yet you overcame that, you grew so much, became confident in who and what you are. You impressed even me.” His soft tone went to hell as he then uttered on a growl, “UntilConstantine. And now, also losing your mom.”

I slapped his hand away, then shoved him back with a burst of my strength.

Of course, the infuriating bastard caught his balance easily, absorbing my blow with his royal Dark Fae strength too.

“He hasn’t ruined me! None of it has!”

“And yet it’s coming across exactly like that, because in your bid to prove that to yourself, you’ve shut down to it all. You’re not facing it, Alena. And you’re trying to blow right past your grief too so you don’t feel it, that pain.”

I took his words in. His heavy fucking words.

And the fact that he was also telling me that being this way was hurting the men I loved, the men who’d become my family, those I cared about above all else.

Those I would do anything for.

Those that Ineededto do anything for right now.

I scrubbed my hand over my face and turned away. “If I… if I do that, it’ll all come bleeding out and I might not be able to control it. Then I’ll just be a mess. Is that not weakness?”

“No,” a response came, vehemently.

But it wasn’t his.

I turned to see Talon had come out of the house.

As he strode toward us, he exchanged a chin lift with Orpheus, some sort of understanding passing between them.

Orpheus nodded and met him halfway.

“Thank you, baby bird,” he said, kissing his cheek, then heading on into the house.

Talon came to me, a sad smile on his face. “As he most often is—or as he’d say,alwaysis—Ore is right about this, firecracker.”

“I know.”

“Yeah?” he asked tentatively.

I nodded.

---